Author(s): Mischa Berlinski

General Fiction

This is a daring and spellbinding first novel of anthropologists, missionaries, demon possession, sexual taboos, murder, and an obsessed young reporter. 'This is a great story...You can't stop reading until midnight (good), and you don't hate yourself in the morning (better).' - Stephen King.When his girlfriend takes a job in northern Thailand, Mischa goes along for the ride, finding work as a freelance reporter for an English-language newspaper. One drunken evening a fellow expat tips him off to a story. A charismatic American anthropologist serving a life sentence for murder, Martiya van der Leun, has been found dead in her prison cell - she has committed suicide. What begins as mild curiosity in the case rapidly becomes an obsession, as Mischa seeks to reconstruct the details of Martiya's life - and death.His search draws him deep into her world. He interviews her colleagues, seeks out the family of her victim, and eventually travels into the Thai hills, into the world of the remote Dyalo tribe who Martiya studied and lived among.